New York's Penn Station, which should be the crown jewel of American passenger rail travel, is a testament to underinvestment and bureaucratic inefficiency, says Renn. Photo: IBTimes

After a trip to the East Coast, Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile came back with a critique of the passenger experience along America’s most important rail corridor. You can’t blame all the problems on the lack of investment, he writes:

Start with the sorry state of Penn Station in New York City, America’s busiest train station. (In fact, it’s the busiest transportation facility of any type in the United States, if Wikipedia can be believed). Yes, the place is a depressing underground dump. Yes, there used to be a glorious train station there that was demolished in the 1960s. Yes, we probably need to invest many billions in upgrades.

Yet is it a lack of funds that make the three agencies that call it home – Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island Railroad – act as though the others don’t exist? The three railroads have completely separate ticketing areas, signage systems, etc. This is hardly the only case in America. For some reason, Amtrak seems to despise sharing ticket agents with other carriers. There are separate windows for Amtrak and commuter lines everywhere I’ve been. Given that many journeys include both commuter and inter-city segments, this seems crazy. If you can’t have integrated ticketing (and actually, I don’t see why you can’t), at least you should be able to have a single agent help you.

While we are waiting around for funding issues to be resolved, wouldn’t it be nice if our governments and various travel companies actually focused on fixing some of these straightforward problems with coordination, ticketing, and customer service? It’s hard to take their capital requests seriously if they aren’t going to do what they can now.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Streets.mn explores how the design of traditional, walkable college campuses encourages good research, happy students and better financial support from alumni. Baltimore Spokes shares a study that found that aggressive driving increases after viewing Nascar races. And Bike Lane Living examines San Diego’s bike progress compared to other West Coast cities.

Asking why there isn’t one ticketing agent for the various rail lines that run along the Northeast Corridor is like asking why there isn’t one ticket agent issuing tickets for the multitude of airlines that operate in the US. Saying that you see no reason why this can’t be done is a gross over-simplification of how our rail operators work in the US. It shows a lack of understanding. These are separate agencies run by different federal, state and local entities with completely independent funding streams and budgets. Surely, you must be aware of the complexities such a system would require and you were probably just day dreaming aloud, right?

Mark Walker

One of Penn’s many inadequacies is signage to guide LIRR, NJT, and Amtrak passengers to where they need to go in the maze. This shouldn’t cost much to fix, making the problem that much more puzzling and frustrating.

Albert

Because of the immense amount of land necessary for multiple runways, and the resultant large distances between airlines, it sort of makes sense that airlines would use separate ticketing facilities, while that excuse is irrelevant to train stations, where all trains gather in a single relatively small area underneath a single building.

carma

it is a mess. having compared to Japan’s Rail system and ease of connection to their shinkansen, you wonder why the US has it so bad.

ever see Tokyo Eki? its so convenient to transfer to multiple lines, the shinkansen and you can get your “omiyage” presents all without leaving the station.

Guest

Having been a daily user of Penn Station, I agree Penn Station is ugly on the surface. But the design of the station works well BECAUSE of the three seperate waiting areas. The people going to NJ all wait on one side, the people going to Long Island wait on one side, and the people going to point farther on Amtrak wait on one side. If you are a regular commuter this takes about 1 day to figure out. As thousands of people an hour stream into the station, it sure makes it easy to know where to wait and to know what screen to watch for your train and track 3 to appear on. Also, each day, the same trains usually depart from the same track at the same time and it makes it faster to board people if they are all already waiting in the same general area. Penn station is HUGE, and if you had people waiting trains all over the place it would take even longer to get everyone to the right track. It may seem like a mess to tourists, but for the VAST majority of everyday users it actually has a pretty functional design that works great.

David Vartanoff

Amtrak sells MARC commuter tix in DC. OTOH it has been traditional for decades to have different agents sell differents classes of tix has some validity. Why have someone need to be skilled in both all of the local fare details AND able to put together a several city trip involving sleeping car space? Much like having express checkout at stores.

Anonymous

Um, but there is the ability to buy tickets from one ticket agent issuing tickets for the multitude of airlines that operate in the US, it is called the IATA system, and together with the ARC, it is how companies like Expedia and Orbitz work. With the notable exception of Southwest, you can interline with any airline, and each airline can issue tickets on another. That is how you get rerouted when one airline has a service issue not impacting others.

Aaron is spot on. The Hudson River is seemingly a harder barrier to transportation than the Berlin Wall ever was, witness the lack of logical extension of the 7 train to New Jersey (The capacity is needed and the TBM is in the ground, but NO!).

Almost all of the capacity problems of New York’s Pennsylvania Railroad Station could be solved by simply through-running trains from Long Island to New Jersey as it is done in places without juvenile territorial pissing matches.

Anonymous

It was easier to navigate when it looked like this from above waist-level:

Trains run to a timetable. The arrival time of the train and the platform track it will serve are known. Right? Right? So all passengers need to do is show up a couple minutes ahead, and board.

No “waiting areas”. No “fare gates”. No “security”. No “unlimited chaos”. No “screw you”. Just ride.

Richard Mlynarik

Surely, you must be aware of the complexities such a system would require and you were probably just day dreaming aloud, right?

There are something like 40 different public transportation service providers around Zürich. You know, the city in the a low-cost, third-word country of Switzerland.

One ticket. One timetable.

You people need to get out into the real world sometime to see what can be done. Trivially.

anonymouse

There is. It’s called Expedia.

Anonymous

“Why should there be waiting areas at all?”

… because sometimes I get to Penn Station ahead of schedule and I need
someplace to wait? I agree that Penn Station sucks, but I don’t see
the problems that you’re complaining about here.

http://stopandmove.blogspot.com/ Jass

Apparently, @f84b22d3acf35e1589e626b8e51fe1a4:disqus is an untraveled american, because I certainly remember the waiting room in Milan for example.

MarkB

No. All 400 or so pax on a particular train are forbidden from arriving at the station more than five minutes in advance. Then all 400 or so (or 800 if two trains are departing within minutes) have to rush the station within a five minute interval.

It’s not Richard’s fault if you can’t time your arrival exactly. Never mind (a) infirmities that slow your walk to a snail’s pace or (b) detours on the roadway or (c) the need to make one more run to the bathroom or (d) whatever else life throws at you that you might want to compensate for by arriving well-early of departure. Nope, that’s all your fault, bub.

Davistrain

I see the outrage over the demolition of New York Penn Station is still simmering. Never having seen the classic building in person, and having only used the present version a few times, this mindset is something I can relate to only on an academic level. Regarding the need for waiting areas, I think the person who doubted the need for such facilities must have an industrial production engineer’s point of view, which is fine for a “widget factory” but doesn’t work too well when herds of people and complex transport systems are involved. And, although I’ve never been to Switzerland, from what I’ve heard, it has more common sense than just about any other place on Earth. One of my daughters visited there and observed, “It’s like the whole country was run by the Walt Disney organization.”

Richard Mlynarik

The places for people to wait for trains are called “platforms”, “cafes”, “shops”, and “streets”.

In the modern world, that is, the one where customers aren’t treated like cattle and kept in pens for the convenience of functionaries from the 1930s.

Anonymous

@Jamesboat:disqus And I remember them in Paris and London.

@f84b22d3acf35e1589e626b8e51fe1a4:disqus You can’t have hundreds of people wait on platforms if they need to be clear for passengers on arriving trains; you can’t expect people to always wait in the street when it might be cold or hot or rainy. As for shops and cafes, I’m not sure why I should have to wait somewhere that I’m expected to buy something.

Richard Mlynarik

Hopeless.

Did it ever occur to you that the problem is with the platforms and platform access and with the chaotic incompetent unpredictable train operations and not with the passengers? Blame the victims!

Waiting rooms and “clearing platforms” are stuff from the steam era. Which American “rail transit activists” generally never wish to leave.

@f84b22d3acf35e1589e626b8e51fe1a4:disqus I’m a victim because you say I am? If you say so.

Look, I’m not saying Penn Station isn’t crappy. It is. Its operations could be better and its wayfinding and aesthetics are awful. But on the list of things that wrong with it, “there are waiting rooms” is WAAAAAAAAY down toward the bottom.

Anonymous

There are differing philosophies as to how a train station functions. Some from today and others from 100 years ago when the part of Penn Station being discussed here was built. And let’s not forget, Penn Station was built entirely with private funding and the economies that brings!

American stations have long had the “Gate” mentality that was imported from the Termini of London. (Try boarding an intercity train there at the last moment.) Remember too that until Hells Gate Bridge was opened in 1916, through running trains from Boston to Washington were not possible. Indeed, it is within the Amtrak era that some trains from Boston, and trains to Albany and points beyond, terminated at GCT.

So “through running” trains for which the new Lehrter/Main Station in Berlin was built for are indeed somewhat of a “novelty” at Penn Station. Also, trains were more frequently used for longer journeys, thus the prospect of arriving earlier and boarding a train staged for a longer time was the intent of the non-LIRR and non-now-NJTransit services at Penn Station.

(There are far more commuter trains from New Jersey into Manhattan today, most of those trains used to service stations in Jersey City and Hoboken, and commuters connected across the Hudson by Ferry. Same to for LIRR operations originating at Long Island City or Jamaica. Google “Manhattan Transfer”, not the musical group, sometime.)

Penn Station has narrow platforms which cannot be expanded unless tracks are removed. That means moving trains back to GCT or the New Jersey/Long Island Termini. It would also involve a massive investment in infrastructure that is not apparently of any priority to the current governing party in New Jersey or Washington, D.C.. Converting it into the glorious palace that Berlin now has as its current Hauptbahnhof…

(Which was partially, at least the North/South Tunnels bit, started through work by Albert Speer towards “Welthaupstadt Germania”, i.e. massive public funding)

…would have certainly been possible if the Messrs. Oberth and Von Braun had been as successful with their work at Peenemunde, as the USAF and RAF were with finding Berlin on their primitive radars.

But then how many of us would be here to discuss it?

Miles Bader

Does Penn station not have cafes and shops in it (I dunno, I think I’ve only ever been there twice in my life)?

Aprilschild4

Have never been to Penn Station before, but will be using it in a couple weeks to go up to Boston. Have just booked tickets and Amtrack advise getting to the station at least 30 minutes in advance… so, is there nowhere to wait for those 30 minutes, or is getting there that early a waste of tim?

Follow Streetsblog

Transportation for America

America's transportation system is half a century behind--causing unnecessary pollution, expense, and congestion. We need our leaders to invest in public transportation, high-speed passenger rail, streets safe for biking and walking, maintaining our roads and transit systems, and green innovation.